Elements of a literature review

A research in to my library y guides home to writing a literature to writing a literature purpose of a literature review is to critically evaluate all of the significant literature surrounding a particular topic or research area. As well as providing a description and summary of the literature to date, it should also evaluate and analyse the material and present it in an organised manner. The literature review might be a self contained unit or it could form an introductory chapter in a thesis or do a literature review? Purpose of the literature review is to:Provide an analysis and overview of the current state of research on a particular e the reader with an idea of popular theories in the field, contrasting perspectives and gaps in the helps you to justify why you have chosen this area for your own you to position your work relative to that of previous components of a literature literature review should be composed of 4 stages. Evaluating the including any material that you have found in your literature review you must evaluate your results to ensure that the information you have found is relevant, accurate, reliable and current. Analysing the this stage you must read, interpret and structure the data that you have gathered and finally you must write the review. The review must consist of:An introduction– here the topic should be specified, overall trends and conflicts in the literature should be outlined and gaps in previous research identified.

Parts of a literature review

It is also very important at this point to justify your reasons for writing the review. Body– this will be the bulk of the review and here you will discuss each piece of literature in turn. Evaluate the current general state of research in this area and finally discuss the research opportunities in this ces on writing and tutorial on how to write a literature tutorial is aimed at those students involved in research and outlines the purpose of a literature review. At the end of the tutorial students will demonstrate an understanding of how to write a literature provide your feedback on this tutorial, or e-mail the library holds a small collection of books with advice on conducting your research and writing. To view a complete list of online guides go to the guides y online are a number of online tutorials aimed at students seeking to research their projects and course assessments, including tutorials for 1st year students, and those seeking basic study es on writing literature reviews:Citation and writing your literature review you will have to properly cite the sources you have used. 2013 dublin: institute of technology tallaght | web design by granite g a literature ions | examples | student resources. After you have read and reviewed studies related to your topic you will need to create a narrative description of what you discovered.

As you write you will need to remember that the purpose of a literature review is to:Inform the reader of the knowledge and ideas about the the reader of your reason for reviewing the a focus- make sure that your work is organized around ideas- not the sources but a direction or position that they will a working thesis. What it does do is to create a way of looking at the research around your about elements of organization- this means that you must consider the way that the information will be presented. The general topic, issue or area of out trends in the published research in the area or conflicts in the theory, methodology, evidence, and conclusions, or gaps in the research or a new your reasons for reviewing literature on your topic; explain your stance and organizational ’s important to consider how you will present the sources you have found. This may be a place for you to suggest that there are flaws in the research, theories, findings or areas of de by providing insight into relationship between the topic and the focus of your area of interest, study or proposed position on the evidence- your interpretation of the resources you have chosen must be backed up with evidence that shows a link between what you are saying and information to support selective- choose the most important parts of each source to highlight in your quotes sparingly- most literature reviews do not use direct quotes from the text. Your goal is to summarize in your own words the studies you have found that provide documentation of your position or serve as ize and synthesize- you will summarize the work of others as you create your literature review you’ll also need to synthesize it as a way to relate it to your own your voice- this means that even though you are presenting the ideas of others you will still need to use your ideas and rase with caution- retell the ideas of others with caution being sure to watch that the ideas of others are presented as someone else's and your ideas are presented , revise, revise- take advantage of your mentors and teachers. Ask them to read your work and help you to make your literature review as well written as may be helpful for you to take a look at some literature reviews that have already been created. The links below will give you an opportunity to take a look at some sample literature reviews so that you will have a sense of what your literature review should look cent depression and ture review lesson ture review guiding for writing a literature a literature on writing a literature review (see teacher or access from home).

Tips & tools / literature this handout is handout will explain what literature reviews are and offer insights into the form and construction of literature reviews in the humanities, social sciences, and . The “literature” of a literature review refers to any collection of materials on a topic, not necessarily the great literary texts of the world. Literature” could be anything from a set of government pamphlets on british colonial methods in africa to scholarly articles on the treatment of a torn acl. And a review does not necessarily mean that your reader wants you to give your personal opinion on whether or not you liked these is a literature review, then? Literature review discusses published information in a particular subject area, and sometimes information in a particular subject area within a certain time period. Literature review can be just a simple summary of the sources, but it usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis. And depending on the situation, the literature review may evaluate the sources and advise the reader on the most pertinent or how is a literature review different from an academic research paper?

Main focus of an academic research paper is to develop a new argument, and a research paper is likely to contain a literature review as one of its parts. In a research paper, you use the literature as a foundation and as support for a new insight that you contribute. The focus of a literature review, however, is to summarize and synthesize the arguments and ideas of others without adding new do we write literature reviews? If you have limited time to conduct research, literature reviews can give you an overview or act as a stepping stone. For scholars, the depth and breadth of the literature review emphasizes the credibility of the writer in his or her field. Comprehensive knowledge of the literature of the field is essential to most research writes these things, anyway? Reviews are written occasionally in the humanities, but mostly in the sciences and social sciences; in experiment and lab reports, they constitute a section of the paper.

For other literature reviews in your area of interest or in the discipline and read them to get a sense of the types of themes you might want to look for in your own research or ways to organize your final review. You can simply put the word “review” in your search engine along with your other topic terms to find articles of this type on the internet or in an electronic database. However, if you are writing a review in the humanities, history, or social sciences, a survey of the history of the literature may be what is needed, because what is important is how perspectives have changed through the years or within a certain time period. Try sorting through some other current bibliographies or literature reviews in the field to get a sense of what your discipline expects. You can also use this method to consider what is currently of interest to scholars in this field and what is gies for writing the literature review. Literature review, like a term paper, is usually organized around ideas, not the sources themselves as an annotated bibliography would be organized. Literature review may not have a traditional thesis statement (one that makes an argument), but you do need to tell readers what to expect.

Develop an organization for your review at both a global and local level:First, cover the basic like most academic papers, literature reviews also must contain at least three basic elements: an introduction or background information section; the body of the review containing the discussion of sources; and, finally, a conclusion and/or recommendations section to end the uction: gives a quick idea of the topic of the literature review, such as the central theme or organizational : contains your discussion of sources and is organized either chronologically, thematically, or methodologically (see below for more information on each). Create an organizational method to focus this section even help you come up with an overall organizational framework for your review, consider the following scenario and then three typical ways of organizing the sources into a review:You’ve decided to focus your literature review on materials dealing with sperm whales. This makes you wonder about american whaling methods during the time portrayed in moby dick, so you find some academic articles published in the last five years on how accurately herman melville portrayed the whaling scene in his your review follows the chronological method, you could write about the materials above according to when they were published. Thus, the review loses its chronological your sources by publication chronology, then, only if the order demonstrates a more important trend. For instance, you could order a review of literature on biological studies of sperm whales if the progression revealed a change in dissection practices of the researchers who wrote and/or conducted the studies. Under this method, you would combine the recent studies on american whaling in the 19th century with moby dick itself in the 1800-1899 category, even though the authors wrote a century ic reviews of literature are organized around a topic or issue, rather than the progression of time. For instance, the sperm whale review could focus on the development of the harpoon for whale hunting.

The only difference here between a “chronological” and a “thematic” approach is what is emphasized the most: the development of the harpoon or the harpoon more authentic thematic reviews tend to break away from chronological order. For instance, a thematic review of material on sperm whales might examine how they are portrayed as “evil” in cultural documents. A review organized in this manner would shift between time periods within each section according to the point made. A methodological scope will influence either the types of documents in the review or the way in which these documents are you’ve decided on the organizational method for the body of the review, the sections you need to include in the paper should be easy to figure out. A thematic review would have subtopics based upon factors that relate to the theme or mes, though, you might need to add additional sections that are necessary for your study, but do not fit in the organizational strategy of the body. Here are a few other sections you might want to consider:Current situation: information necessary to understand the topic or focus of the literature y: the chronological progression of the field, the literature, or an idea that is necessary to understand the literature review, if the body of the literature review is not already a s and/or standards: the criteria you used to select the sources in your literature review or the way in which you present your information. For instance, you might explain that your review includes only peer-reviewed articles and ons for further research: what questions about the field has the review sparked?

Here is a sample paragraph from a literature review about sexism and language to illuminate the following discussion:However, other studies have shown that even gender-neutral antecedents are more likely to produce masculine images than feminine ones (gastil, 1990). Your interpretation of the available sources must be backed up with evidence to show that what you are saying is only the most important points in each source to highlight in the review. The type of information you choose to mention should relate directly to the review’s focus, whether it is thematic, methodological, or and mills do not use any direct quotes. That is because the survey nature of the literature review does not allow for in-depth discussion or detailed quotes from the text. But if you find yourself wanting to put in more quotes, check with your ize and er to summarize and synthesize your sources within each paragraph as well as throughout the review. The authors here recapitulate important features of hamilton’s study, but then synthesize it by rephrasing the study’s significance and relating it to their own the literature review presents others’ ideas, your voice (the writer’s) should remain front and center. So check over your review again to make sure it follows the assignment and/or your outline.

Then, just as you would for most other academic forms of writing, rewrite or rework the language of your review so that you’ve presented your information in the most concise manner possible. Finally, double check that you’ve documented your sources and formatted the review appropriately for your discipline. May reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout (just click print) and attribute the source: the writing center, university of north carolina at chapel you enjoy using our handouts, we appreciate contributions of library research ture reviews: 5. Good literature review is not simply a list describing or summarizing several articles; a literature review is discursive prose which proceeds to a conclusion by reason or argument. There should be strong evidence of analytical thinking shown through the connections you make between the literature being an outline, then summarize & an outline for your review. Read more about developing an outline here at the purdue owl ize & each work in the context of its contribution to the understanding of the be the relationship of each work to the others under consideration, noting contradictory fy areas of prior scholarship to prevent duplication of the way forward for further how to organize your writing, you should consider a few different ways of organizing or categorizing the literature you've looked at and consider prioritizing the readings, or grouping them by methodology or theme. Methodologically – organizing by method, much like organizing by theme, puts similar sources together and illustrates what effect method has on final out this phrasebank of terms and phrases to use in your research ts of the literature are many different ways to organize your references in a literature review, but most reviews contain certain basic ives - clearly describe the purpose of the paper and state your objectives in completing the literature ound/introduction – give an overview of your research topic and what prompted s - describe step by step how your performed your evaluation of the sion/body - the body contains the evaluation or synthesis of the materials.

You may also want to include a section on "questions for further research" and discuss what issues the review has sparked about the topic/field or offer suggestions for future studies that build on your current sion – a summary of your analysis and evaluation of the reviewed works and how it is related to its parent discipline, scientific endeavor, or graphy - a list of the papers you discussed, aka references. To learn more about different citation styles, visit the "manage references and citations" you actually begin to write the review, stick to your outline and keep these tips in mind:Consider your audience. A lit review is not an annotated the temptation to refer to *all* the readings you've evaluated. To begin with, focus on readings you've identified as essential or the reader how the literature intersects with your project -- how your project complements the existing literature. Schools & ering and computer molson school of of graduate schools, colleges &   /   library   /   help & how-to   /   writing   /   how to write a literature to write a literature is a literature reviewpurpose of the literature reviewcomponents of the literature reviewsteps in the literature review processevaluating sourcesexamples of a published literature reviewadditional sources on writing literature to write an annotated to write a book review & a book to write a research is a literature literature review is a written overview of major writings and other sources on a selected topic. Sources covered in the review may include scholarly journal articles, books, government reports, web sites, etc. It is usually presented as a distinct section of a graduate thesis or e of the literature purpose of the literature review is to provide a critical written account of the current state of research on a selected topic:Identifies areas of prior each source in the context of its contribution to the understanding of the specific issue, area of research, or theory under bes the relationship of each source to the others that you have fies new ways to interpret, and shed light on any gaps in, previous the way forward for further ents of the literature literature review should include the following:Objective of the literature ew of the subject under categorization of sources selected into those in support of your particular position, those opposed, and those offering completely different sion of both the distinctiveness of each source and its similarities with the in the literature review ation of a literature review may be divided into four steps:Define your subject and the scope of the the library catalogue, subject specific databases and other search tools to find sources that are relevant to your and evaluate the sources and to determine their suitability to the understanding of topic at hand (see the evaluating sources section).

Of a published literature ture reviews are often published as scholarly articles, books, and reports. Here is an example of a recent literature review published as a scholarly journal article:Ledesma, m. Critical race theory in education: a review of past literature and a look to the future. Link to the onal sources on writing literature r information on the literature review process may be found below:Booth, a. The literature review: six steps to d with permission and thanks from how to write a literature review originally created by kenneth lyons, mchenry library, university of california, santa  last updated on: thursday 14 september 2017.